On this week’s edition of The Walking Dead, viewers and characters waved goodbye to Carl Grimes, played by Chandler Riggs. The character revealed he was bitten by a zombie on the abdomen in the season 8 midseason finale, leaving everybody watching at home shocked. It was a surprise move by showrunner Scott Gimple, and one that deviated from the events that have taken place in the Robert Kirkman comic book series of the same name, from which the series takes the bulk of its material.
Chandler Riggs has played Carl Grimes ever since The Walking Dead came to TV / Credit: AMC
Though the decision was met with a lot of backlash from a vocal portion of The Walking Dead’s viewing fan base, it was one that AMC and those working on the series stuck with, and the ninth episode of season 8 saw Carl saying his goodbyes to the group of survivors that he helped escape Alexandria upon Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) and the Saviors’ attack.
Asked by EW if there was one moment that truly choked him up during filming or watching the latest episode back, Riggs revealed: “The goodbye scene with Judith, I think, is always going to get me, just because of how depressing some of the stuff I was saying was. I remember when I read the script, I was like, ‘Gosh, I’m going to have to say all that?’ it was definitely not a scene that I was excited for. Like, when he’s talking about his mom telling him that he was going to beat this world, and he didn’t. all of that stuff, is just so, so sad.”
The scene was certainly one of the most emotional moments of the episode, but the whole thing had audiences choked up, as they saw a vision of the world in which everybody lived peacefully alongside one another – even Negan. It was the world that Carl hoped his family would one day be a part of, but with the direction things seem to be headed, it may be more of a pipe dream than something that’s actually possible.
The Walking Dead continues Sundays in the US on AMC and Mondays in the UK on FOX.
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